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All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall, Earth changes, But thy soul and God stand sure, Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure. Of all the different types of material, ceramics might be the most difficult to define. Many would regard them as falling in a small and rather restricted group, and the only examples that come readily to mind would probably be bathroom fixtures, tiles, and the insulators in spark plugs and on telephone poles. The term ceramic actually covers a large variety of natural and artificial substances that share the desirable qualities of hardness and resistance to heat, electricity and corrosion. Just how large and how important the ceramic domain is can be gauged by some of its members: stone, brick, concrete, sand, diamond, glass, clay and quartz. If there has been a lack of understanding of ceramics, it is excusable because even dictionary definitions tend to be rather narrow. We find them restricted to either pottery or porcelain in most cases, and even the better efforts usually go no farther than ‘products of industries involving the use of clay or other silicates’. The word ceramic actually comes from the Greek word keramos, which means burnt stuff. This is too broad a term to be useful here. The best working definition uses a combination of chemical and physical criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The prehistory and history of health and nutrition in Ecuador are examined from 22 samples of human remains drawn from sites that date from about 6000 bc to ad 1940 and come from diverse ecological environments. The study suggests a deterioration of health and nutrition with the beginnings of agriculture and increased sedentism. It also reveals less evidence of morbidity in prehistoric samples from the highlands compared to the coastal regions. However, within the coastal samples there were variations between the tropical humid north coast and the more arid south coast that related to differences in the natural environment and in the character of societies living there. Apart from the higher frequencies of periosteal lesions and evidence of trauma, generally the north coast samples revealed less evidence of morbidity than those from the south coast. The skeletal evidence reveals little change in health and nutrition following the Spanish Conquest. This may reflect in part the samples available, but also the fact that traumatic events, such as epidemics that are noted in the documentary sources, left no mark on the skeleton. The study suggests that health and nutrition in Ecuador were generally better than in other regions of Latin America, notably Mexico. Scholars generally agree that when European explorers penetrated the New World it was already occupied by diverse peoples. Scholars also agree that their populations declined as a result of the introduction of new pathogens and the cultural changes brought by colonial rule. However, there is less agreement on the magnitude of the decline and on exactly what new pathogens were introduced, the extent of their impact, and their significance relative to others factors implicated in the decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Central Mexico witnessed the development and florescence of pre–Columbian Mesoamerican complex societies for over two thousand years, including several urban civilizations and centers of influential empires. Using four skeletal samples that span the Mesoamerican sequence from an early ranked village to a Post classic urban society, we trace the health effects of living in such an arid highland environment. The small skeletal samples available here cannot provide more than hints as to quality of life, but comparisons with other hemispheric samples indicate that health problems are always present. There is moderate morbidity in the earliest, most simple society; however, as populations became more dense, urban, socially stratified, and militaristic, there is a general trend to greater burdens of morbidity through time as reflected in the various health indicators. Future research is needed to test the broad pattern of change portrayed here in this first attempt to look at the quality of life for all of pre–Columbian Central Mexico. INTRODUCTION Mesoamerica has been an important area for archaeological research for some time. Despite the amount of information that we have from these ancient societies, whether from small or grand monumental sites, our knowledge about their inhabitants is less developed: how they lived, what they ate, what kind of health problems they had, or what kind of activities they developed. We think that a helpful means of answering these questions is through the analysis of the way of life of these individuals. Our approach is to study the skeletons, searching for the multicausality of physiological adjustment with the material conditions of existence and lifestyle, which in turn shape culture, habits, and habitat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The civilization of the Maya of Mesoamerica has experienced two major disruptions within the last thousand years. The effects of these disruptions were studied on skeletal samples and the patterns of morbidity and mortality reflected these times of trouble, although the time of the Classic collapse was the most stressful. The Maya have endured to the present day and are still facing many health problems in adjusting to the modern world. Comparison of some measures on living individuals that are equivalent to those on skeletal samples indicates that the Maya still suffer from quality-of-life problems. A perspective on Maya history using health indicators reveals that in spite of quite significant burdens of morbidity and probable high mortality at many points in their history, the Maya were able to build, intensify, and maintain a distinctive civilization. The Maya are a well-known and distinct group of Native Americans that are presently concentrated in parts of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Although they are one of the largest such indigenous groups surviving since the European discovery and settlement of the New World, they are probably best known because of one of the most famous collapses of a civilization revealed by archaeology. The present day extent of the Maya is less than it was during the Late Classic Period (circa ad 700–1000), when there was a dense population in the lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a life of bold decisions, none was more significant for the future than Cortés's decision to rebuild the city of Tenochtitlán-Mexico and to make it the capital of the kingdom of New Spain. The site had many serious disadvantages. It was an island, marshy and reputedly unhealthy; it produced no food of its own, except the fish caught in the lake; its drinking water had to be brought by expensive artificial means from the hills of Chapultepec, several miles away; it communicated with the mainland by causeways, and many among Cortés's following thought that these causeways, with their easily invested bridges, would be dominated by the Indians of the mainland rather than by the island Europeans. Moreover, a large Indian population still lived on the island, lurking among the ruins of buildings which Cortés had had pulled down in order to dump the rubble in the drainage canals, to facilitate the manœuvres of his cavalry. In short, the site might well be a trap, incapable of resisting siege, and peculiarly vulnerable in its provisioning and water supply. Cortés, though certainly aware of the economic defects of the place, overrode the objections. He believed it to be as strong a site for Europeans as for Indians. Further, he probably wished to avoid a too rapid dispersal of his followers through the land they had only partly conquered, where they might still become the victims of their new vassals, or of their own disagreements. Finally Cortés was wise enough to appreciate the prestige of Tenochtitlán, its ‘renown and importance’, as he expressed it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]